Panther Baby

September 26, 2011
This spirited, well-honed account of cutting his teeth as a member of the Black Panthers brings Joseph back to his youth, a painful time in late-1960s America. Abandoned by his unwed Cuban mother and brought up by an elderly Southern black couple in the North Bronx, Joseph (born “Eddie”) grew up to be light-skinned, conscientious, and an accelerated student who learned early on the deprivations of blacks in white society. From becoming radicalized at the African-American Camp Minisink, in New York State, in the summer of 1968, Joseph gravitated toward the militancy of the Black Panthers, founded by Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale, activists impatient with the stalled civil rights movement and ready to grasp freedom and economic destiny for poor black communities in a more compelling manner. Immersed in grassroots community-action programs, to the detriment of his high school studies, Joseph, now renamed Jamal, was steeped in the political education of the Panthers. This included weapons training for armed struggle; being arrested as part of the netted Panther 21 for allegedly planning to “go to war with the government” (Lumumba and Afeni Shakur were leaders, and they were defended by William Kunstler), and serving 11 months among hardened criminals at the age of 16. Joseph’s memoir focuses on this intensely compressed period, when hopes were high for “revolution in our lifetime” and a reckless, street-fueled violence smoldered, yet the schism in Panther leadership undermined the cause. Joseph’s clear-eyed casting back reveals the streamlined, fluid quality of a fine storyteller.

November 15, 2011
Joseph (Tupac Shakur Legacy, 2006) offers an inspiring, unapologetic account of his transformation from armed revolutionary to revolutionary artist. In the late 1960s, the young, gifted author was inevitably drawn to the Black Panthers. Amid the dangerous life in the Bronx ghetto, he writes, "nobody was badder than the Panthers." Their usual apparel--black berets, black leather jackets and guns--portrayed a romantic image of a group serious about revolution during a time under "a revolutionary magic spell where anything seemed possible and victory over the oppressor was assured." Soon the Panthers became Joseph's whole life. Beyond the image, he learned, they were a group of men and women thoughtful in their ideology and dedicated to serving the community through schools and breakfast programs. Internecine power struggles, fueled by government infiltration and violence, broke the Panthers apart, however, and Joseph found himself going underground and finally to prison. He remained there for the next 20 years or so, a man-child coming of age behind bars. In prison, he discovered art and began to write poetry and plays, and he formed a theater group of prisoners who performed his plays about the life around them. Quickly becoming an established artist and drawn to academia, Joseph used these credentials to help found Harlem's IMPACT Repertory Theatre, where thousands of young people experience music, drama, dance and film. Improbably, this led Joseph--and, he insists, IMPACT--to an Academy Award nomination for Best Song. Though the author's commitment to revolutionary ends remained intact, the means to that end had changed. Not all will find Joseph's politics compelling, but readers will draw inspiration from his story of struggle and transformation.

(COPYRIGHT (2011) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

December 1, 2011
One of the few in the militant Black Panther activist movement to survive the streets and long periods on the run and in prison, Joseph is now a Columbia University professor and Oscar nominee. His stirring memoir is a story of commitment to the struggle as a young revolutionary in the Bronx's black ghetto. And he tells it without self-importance. As a young man, he wanted to be militant cool maybe that would get him a Panther girlfriendbut my journey to the underground was neither romantic nor sexy. The cops beat him unconscious. He accused the government of murder and of assisting and encouraging the drug epidemic. Then there was the painful discovery that his longtime mentor-friend was a police spy. Sentenced to 12 years, Joseph earned three degrees in prison, organized political education classes and study groups, and put on a play with a multiracial cast. Both the history and the continuing connections make this personal story of a political prisoner of war sure to spark intense discussion. Was Joseph terrorist or freedom fighter?(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)